Many medical specialists, as well as paramedical personnel, face situations on a daily basis in which they need to perform an orotracheal intubation, also known as OTI, which consists of inserting a plastic tube between the vocal cords in order to ensure a correct sealing of the airways and adequate ventilation and oxygenation of the patients. To perform this technique it is necessary to use a conventional laryngoscope, as well as to learn how to perform a procedure know as direct laryngoscopy.
Direct laryngoscopy consists of using the blade of a laryngoscope, inserting it into the mouth of the individual and sliding it down the tongue, using the blade to pull the lower maxilla from the oropharyngeal cavity and thus aligning the tracheal axis with the pharyngeal and oral axes, thus exposing the epiglottis and the glottis. By means of tunnel vision, the vocal cords are viewed, facilitating the passage of the orotracheal tube therethrough.
On occasions, the procedure of intubation is made difficult by not correctly viewing the vocal cords, through which the tube must pass, leading to what is known as patients with difficult airways. It must be emphasized that many of these difficult airways are not known until the orotracheal intubation procedure is performed for the first time, making them unknown and unforeseeable.
In order to overcome these difficulties, different devices have been developed to facilitate orotracheal intubation. Among these devices are video laryngoscopes, which are devices similar to laryngoscopes and that incorporate an optical system in order to facilitate tracheal intubation, providing a better vision of the vocal cords. Several models exist, all of which facilitate intubation by improving the field of vision of the airway. In a conventional laryngoscope, used in direct laryngoscopy, the viewing angle is 15°, while in video laryngoscopes the viewing angle can be increased up to 60°.
However, these devices have high costs and, therefore, in most hospitals there is usually a limited amount of these devices, which are rotated through operating rooms or used for services requiring said devices, and therefore they are not always available. Furthermore, they usually consist of different parts, such as integrated monitors, which hinder their portability and limit their mobility.
It is also worth noting that a video laryngoscope provides an indirect vision of the glottis, which means that the difficulty in using these devices does not strive in being able to view the vocal cords, but rather in managing to direct the endotracheal tube through the vocal cords which are being viewed, a procedure for which there is a learning curve, which is different for each video laryngoscope.